Friday, September 4, 2009

Reviews of SEO Tools

For a small business the goal of your web site is to promote your brand and company identity, generate interest in your product or service, and then drive your customers to close more sales. In the last article, I talked about using SEO tools to drive traffic to your web site. In this article I will expand on those ideas, and review some specific web based tools. Let’s review the steps that are involved in a web site development and deployment from the last Blog:

Set up web site Enter keywords Set up Google Adwords Select keywords to trigger your advertisementMonitor results and web site traffic Adjust your keywords and pay per click amount Monitor traffic to see effect of changes made Add more pages and start all over

This week I will focus on the tools to monitor your web site. I have been using these techniques in real time as I have been outlining them on the Blog. Since August 1st over 1000 people have read my Blog, with the readership growing following each entry. I have also seen a steady growth in the traffic to the web site, and an increase in leads for my Business Develop and Outsourced Sales Management Consulting services. There is a clear connection between my Blog postings and activity on the web site. Thank you for your support.

This is a free tool from Hubspot. You enter your web site into this tool, and it will review your web site automatically. It gives a clear review of your site in a simple to understand format. You can then make changes to your site and see how your ranking improves. I found this tool after talking to a very helpful sales person at Hubspot about their complete fee based offering, and I have used it a few times already this week. It very quickly evaluated why one of my clients was not generating any hits on his web site, and I immediately made recommendations to him for improvements.

My web site is hosted by Microsoft Office Live, which has a selection on your home page of Web Site Statistics. I use this feature on a daily basis to look at the traffic on my web site. One of the tools that I think is extremely useful is the “Add an event” box. When ever I do an activity that I think will generate traffic to the site, I enter it into the event log. This puts a red line on my daily traffic graph, and allows me to correlate specific events to changes in traffic. As I mentioned at the beginning of this Blog, I am constantly looking for measureable results. This report gives me the feedback I need to generate more web traffic and grow my company.

There is a Google tool that your can use to monitor web traffic called Google Analytics. I have set up an account for this tool but have not yet used it. Google requires you to insert a HTML code into your web site. If you have access to your site and are comfortable copying and pasting HTML code then Google appears to be a great tool.

This is a very useful site that brings up info on any web site. It shows your sites clicks per day and also reviews the keywords. It is real strength is to compare your site to a competitor’s web site. Spyfu reviews your ad words and gives pay per click information. It provides a lot of feedback which allows you to make informed decisions.

This is an add-on to the Firefox browser. I added it in a few days ago and have only just started to use it. It seems to have a lot of very useful functions. I recommend that you just try it out.

I hope that these reviews of SEO tools are helpful. I welcome any comments or feedback on my blog, and any recommendations you may have for future articles.

Seth Frielich, principal of SMC has over 28 years of experience in industrial sales. Sales Management Consulting was formed in 1998 to bring that experience to clients and help them to grow. His business plans and management techniques have resulted in consistent growth in sales for his clients since SMC was formed. We are looking for new partner companies. We act as the Sales Manager for your company on retained basis, to set up a highly focused team of professional sales agents across the United States, at a fraction of the cost of an in house sales staff. www.salesrepusa.net